Take a drive through Ana's pecan trees!

The extraterrestrial sweetheart, ranch wife, and star of the Distant Cousin stories, Ana Darcy, lives with her family near Mesilla, in southern New Mexico just south of Las Cruces (and about forty miles north of El Paso, Texas). A narrow width of highly productive farmland lies along the Rio Grande River, with harsh desert close on either side. The entire area can easily be seen from the air, in this post and below:

Several satellite photos of the same area may be seen here as well. The larger solid green areas, believe it or not, are vast orchards of pecan trees which yield over twenty-five million pounds of pecans a year.  

Of interest to readers, Ana's husband keeps his wife's space pod in a leased machinery building in the middle of one of these groves. They are fenced and patrolled and the family has never had a problem with intruders--not yet, anyway.

New Mexico Highway 28, the original paved road from Las Cruces to El Paso is seen in the photo above as a thin line running top to bottom. It is not the wider line, which is the bed of the river. 

A drive down Highway 28 can be beautifully hypnotic. Here is a small taste, made from a car traveling 55 mph. Try it! You will see a LOT of pecan trees!

Meet the owner of the space pod! 

A professional review

Readers have their say

A look at some Mesilla Valley neighborhoods

Neighborhoods in the Mesilla Valley, however humble or upscale, tend to be homey, comfortable, and welcoming. Outsiders may not realize that it is against the law to build a home of any material which might burn--like wood. Wood has always been expensive in this area of few forests, and homes made of stone, adobe, brick, or concrete block tend to last...which means that when window frames or roofs become rickety, they are generally repaired rather than having the building demolished. (They also have the lowest fire insurance rates in the United States.)

Above and below are some random neighborhoods in Mesilla, near where the family of extraterrestrial distant cousin Ana Darcy lives, and several small villages to the south along Highway 28, all usually within several blocks of the Rio Grande river. Chope's is a locally popular eatery but the best known restaurant in the area is La Posta, in Mesilla. There are several photos elsewhere on this blog (see below), and we will soon have many more.

Perhaps you can tell: time has not exactly passed this area by, but it does move at a walking pace!

(Right click any photo to open in another tab for more detail.)

More Mesilla Valley photos

More: the Mesilla Plaza & nearby desert

More! the Mesilla Valley area

The Mesilla Plaza & San Albino Church

Pictures of southern New Mexico

Meet Ana Darcy!

Photo: The Mesilla Valley

Here's a lovely aerial shot of nearly the entire Mesilla Valley (click to enlarge). (El Paso is not visible, but is downstream, to the right.) Most obvious is the narrow course of the Rio Grande river, which nourishes the Mesilla Valley in New Mexico, with the city of Las Cruces at the left. Our extraterrestrial heroine Ana Darcy* and her husband and family live near the green areas (pecan orchards, mostly) at the center of the photo. The pod is kept in one of those orchards.

We're looking roughly northeast: the scalding sand dunes of the Chihuahuan desert are at the bottom, and along the top, slanting down diagonally, is the tail end of the Rocky Mountains. The darkest mountains are the Organ Mountains, which loom over Las Cruces in another photo in an earlier post. Readers will remember an exciting event at the end of the first volume, Distant Cousin, which took place directly over these mountains. In the far distance, probably 100 miles away, the snow-topped peak of Sierra Blanca is visible, one of New Mexico's excellent ski areas. The large white area, slightly below the top of the picture, is probably White Sands National Monument, a giant deposit of gypsum dunes, which is mentioned in Distant Cousin: Regeneration.

*Meet Ana Darcy!

Maps (click): El Paso and Mesilla Valley, West Texas, Ft. Davis & Observatory

(If you right click a map to open in its own tab, you won't lose your place in the narrative!)

Ana Darcy Méndez's stories have taken her all over the world, but the map above zeroes in on the area around her home base (at top, just south of Las Cruces and Mesilla, New Mexico, in the dark areas which are enormous groves of pecan trees in the Rio Grande River valley). Distant Cousin: Recirculation takes her to Mata Ortiz, a tiny Mexican town south of Columbus New Mexico (on the border), further down Mexican Highway 2.

The second and third maps above show West Texas venues from Distant Cousin and Distant Cousin: Reincarnation. Ana first came to earth and landed in the mountains to the northwest of Fort Davis, Texas (map #3). The McDonald Observatory is where Ana expected to be greeted by astronomers who would welcome her as the first human to return to the home planet. That did not happen, of course.

The fourth map above shows the highways from Alpine to El Paso, Lac Cruces, and Mesilla., which Ana has driven several times. Note the few towns along this 200+ mile distance: Valentine, Marfa, and Van Horn.


See more maps and photos from the venues in the books down the right column.under the photo of Ana's hair.

Now, meet Ana Darcy!